A note to new readers

I got a lot of new readers this past week, on Tuesday. Don’t know how it happened – if you came on board this week, let me know what brought you here.

This blog updates itself every day, but we skip Sundays: on that day I rest. Which is why Mondays (tomorrow) start with an extra big bang.

What the Adam Ash blog is about:

WHATEVER IS HAPPENING OUT THERE, YOU’LL FIND THE BEST WRITING ABOUT IT IN HERE.

The Adam Ash blog gives you the most interesting and surprising pieces I’ve read -- usually around seven articles a day -- from the many, many things I read every day. I scour the world for good pieces, and read all over the place: blogs, newspapers, magazines, from the US and Europe, Middle-East, Asia, Africa.

If something big happens in the US, like Katrina, I go all out to get you the best and most vivid reporting and op-eds.

I think of this blog as reporting from New York City, and am happy to count many readers from inside and outside the US: the UK, Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, Dubai, South Africa.

It seems most readers check in while at work -- makes a nice break from your office routine.

A typical day’s posting will look something like this:

1. Weird World: a short, funny bit about something weird that’s happened.

2. US Diary: an angry piece about the Bush/Cheney administration from a left-of-center point of view (and boy, is there a lot to be angry about).

3. US Diary: another piece about US politics -- the Democrats, the GOP, Hillary, whatever.

4. A piece about somewhere else in the world.

5. A piece about an important topic: sex, art, feminism, music, movies, whatever.

6. A new chapter from my novel, The Sex Rebel of Jesusland, about a woman’s struggle for sexual freedom in a future America’s ruled by the Religious Right.

7. Bookplanet: a piece about books.

8. Deep Thoughts: an essay on intellectual matters.

About every two weeks I get so exercised about something, usually the fucking Bush/Cheney administration, that I blog about it myself under “Adam’s blogbox.” I use a fair number of four-letter words and sexual metaphors in “Adam’s blogbox.”

About me:

I grew up in South Africa under apartheid, from whence my left-of-center bent. From thence also my bias against fundamentalisms, my anti-religious (yet pro-spirituality) stance, and my pro-feminist proclivities.

I came to the US in 1980, and have been in New York ever since, with a two-year stint in North Carolina.

I believe 9/11 presented the US with a huge moral challenge, and that we failed it, to the detriment of our entire planet. This makes me immensely sad. And also, very pissed-off at my adopted country. If we had a Dr. King or a Mandela or a Gandhi as one of our leaders, the world would’ve been a very different place today. I’ll blog about this soon.

I’ve written six unpublished novels. I’m working on a one-man show, “How To Cook A Man.”

I used to be a slam poet (a very successful one: I was in the finals of four national slams).

You can order a book of my poems, “Suck My Poem by Adam Ash” from lulu.com for $7.99 plus shipping. My poems are fierce, funny, sexy and irreverent, Here’s something typical:

It’s better to have good sex
with someone you hate
than bad sex
with someone you love.

Two favorite blogs are wood s lot and Bitch Ph.D. There are many others I read.

I love women, sex, novels (especially from the 19th century), Nelson Mandela, French intellectuals, rock ‘n roll, foreign movies, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ingmar Bergman, J. M, Coetzee, Bob Dylan, and Monica Vitti (I would’ve given a gonad to spend a weekend with Monica Vitti around the time of her Antonioni movies).

I think marijuana and prostitution should be decriminalized.

I’m working on a record album called “American Sex Rebels.” It will hopefully be finished within the next month or two, and then the songs will be available on iTunes.

I masturbate a lot (something writers do).

That is all. Enjoy.